Learning Object: Video

One of the lesson types available when creating an Online Course is Video. This lesson type allows you to upload a video to Absorb, and have your learners view it as part of the course syllabus. The two file formats currently supported for the video lesson type are MP4 and WEBM. For more information about best best practices when publishing a video for use as web content, please visit our Content Authoring - Videos article.

When setting up your video lesson, you have a number of options available to you. Your Title and Description are publicly available to your learners, while Notes is something only admins will have access to when editing the lesson. You can set your video width and height dimensions in pixels, although this is not necessary, and can be left blank.

As you can see in the above screen capture, you have the option of adding your video file(s). While it's only necessary to add one, you can choose to add multiple versions of your file. This can make it possible for your learners to switch between different resolution options (e.g. 4K, HD, SD, SVGA, VGA, etc.). Providing these options allows for greater flexibility, letting your learners choose the resolution that works best for their connection speed. In order to provide greater flexibility, Absorb allows admins to use both video files uploaded directly to the LMS, or to use a URL for files hosted off-site. This means you can use URLs from YouTube, but many of the below options will be limited in doing so.

In addition to videos, a Poster can be uploaded so that your learners are provided of an image prior to the video starting. This too, is optional, it can be left blank if no poster is necessary or desired.

To provide better accessibility to videos, you can also upload your own Subtitle files in VTT format. If you need to create a Subtitle file, one online option you may want to try is amara.org. Please Note: Subtitles that have overlapping time frames, as seen below, are not currently supported in Absorb's video player.

The last option available for your video lesson is the toggle to Disable Seeking. This ensures that users are not able to fast-forward forward through the video, possibly skipping the content. This will, however, also limit users from going back to watch a particular part again if they missed something. As noted in Absorb, this doesn't work on all devices, but it does prevent seeking in most modern browsers. This option cannot be enforced 100% due to browser based restrictions around HTML5 video. If you are planning to use this option we recommend that you test it on the browsers/devices that you plan to use in order to confirm that it will work as expected.